Participated · Series B · Oct 2021

LoveLocal is a Mumbai, India–based hyper-local e-commerce platform launched in January 2020 by CEO Akanksha Hazari. The company operates in more than 35 cities across India and provides a platform to enable local merchants to reach customers online. It targets digitising the $1.1 trillion unorganised retail market by empowering neighborhood retailers. LoveLocal recently raised $18M (INR 143 crores) in a Pre-Series B funding round. The round included participation from both new and existing investors, reflecting continued capital support for the business. The company’s core focus remains on expanding its reach and digitisation of local retail networks across India. m.Paani designs and implements mobile-based loyalty programmes that let users earn points for mobile phone usage or expenditure on select FMCG products, which can be monetised for products and services. The platform targets the data-sparse unorganised economy, collecting demographic, transactional, geospatial and psychographic data as well as business profile, transaction, customer and territory data about channel retail partners. Launched in 2014, the company positions its loyalty product as a real-time digital pipe for brands to understand and target mass-market consumers. A press release says m.Paani plans to invest the new capital in product development and scale its technology and data-science capabilities, and to expand its footprint through sales and marketing. The company raised $1.35M in a pre-Series A round led by IDG Ventures, Blume Ventures and Saha Fund. Previous seed investors include Adil Allana, Aprameya Radhakrishna and Gautam Ivatury.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2021

Blippar, an augmented-reality pioneer, has repositioned as a B2B company centered on its Blippbuilder SaaS AR creation platform and an in-house Studio B for bespoke work. The company targets use cases across live events, retail, FMCG, automotive, healthcare and education and positions itself as a platform-agnostic alternative to tech giants' AR tools. After earlier consumer-market ambitions, Blippar now leverages the IP and assets from its prior incarnation while operating much leaner. Headcount has fallen from about 340 at its peak to roughly 30 employees, and historically the company raised about $130 million and once claimed a $1.5 billion valuation. In 2020 the company reported a 200% increase in revenue quarter on quarter and says it has delivered campaigns for brands including OnePlus, Kellogg’s and Dr Pepper. Leadership changes have followed the turnaround, with Ambarish Mitra serving as Chief Product Officer and Faisal Galaria cited as CEO driving the repositioning. Founded in 2011, Blippar began by offering AR experiences for brand marketers and publishers, letting users unlock content by scanning a tag called a “Blipp.” The company later shifted toward computer-vision products, launching a consumer-facing visual search engine that identifies cars, plants, and other real-world objects. Most recently Blippar introduced an indoor positioning system to enable AR mapping and content inside commercial buildings. The company has repeatedly pivoted its product focus as the AR market has evolved. Those pivots have strained the business financially: in the 16-month period ending March 31, 2016 Blippar reported £8.5 million ($11.2 million) in revenue and £24 million ($31.5 million) in losses. To date the company has raised more than $137 million, and the latest funding is intended to fund a push to reach profitability within the next 12 months. Blippar launched in 2012 to bring augmented reality to everyday objects for brands, advertisers, and publishers by adding ‘Blipps’ to items like magazine pages and product packaging. Over the past four years it expanded beyond branded AR to deliver real-time AR recognition for many real-world objects, including plants, animals and food. Leading brands can use Blippar’s machine-learning platform to index their products so users can scan items (for example, a pair of Nike shoes) and see price and availability information. The company operates a 60-person engineering team in San Francisco. Blippar emphasizes machine learning and AI as core technology for its real-time AR search engine. It recently closed a funding round to support building out that engineering team and its ML/AI capabilities. Blippar is an augmented-reality advertising and publishing platform that uses real-world markers called "Blipps" to deliver AR layers of content via a camera. The company has historically brokered branded experiences and counted more than 2,500 brands on its platform. Blippar acquired Layar in June 2014 and the merged companies boast over 50 million global users. Founder Rish Mitra positions the technology as enabling a new form of visual search—pointing a camera at an object to surface purchase pages, social conversation, and videos. The company is rolling out a markerless version of its product that would let users "blipp" arbitrary objects and plans to unveil the technology at SXSW. Financially, Blippar announced $45 million in new funding from undisclosed investors. Blippar is a London-based startup that offers a mobile image-recognition and augmented reality platform. Its technology turns a smartphone camera into a ‘lens’ that overlays virtual information — such as links, digital coupons, videos or promotions — on real-world objects. The company says it achieved hundreds of thousands of consumer downloads in the first seven months after its UK debut. Major brands including Tesco, Nestle, Samsung and Unilever have run campaign ‘blipps’ on the platform. Blippar has taken undisclosed seed funding from Qualcomm Ventures and says the seed will act as a springboard to a larger Series A. It expects to close that Series A in early 2012.

Led · Seed · Jan 2020

Greyparrot develops AI-powered ‘Analyzer’ camera systems and a data platform that identify material, product and brand on recycling sorting belts in real time, producing the world’s largest waste dataset. Its technology has recorded more than 1 trillion waste detections and is deployed in recycling facilities across more than 20 countries. Customers include recycling operators such as WM, Veolia, Biffa and FCC, and consumer goods companies including Unilever, L’Oréal and Kenvue, which use Greyparrot’s Deepnest platform for packaging performance insights. The company reports that materials identified by its systems represent an estimated $2.5 billion in recoverable value and that facilities using its verified data see 10%–30% efficiency gains, with one site saving more than $2 million in a year. Greyparrot also cites regulatory demand from expanding EPR laws as a growth driver and aims to scale operations to abate over 1 million tons of waste by 2030.

Participated · Series A · Sep 2019

Arctic Shores provides psychometric assessments that use behavioural tasks and captured responses to determine personality traits and reveal candidate potential. Its application collects 10,000+ data points from an engaging interface and ranks which candidates are most suited to a role. The company offers a self-configure platform and is preparing an innovative update to assess workplace intelligence. Proceeds from the recent funding will be used to accelerate development of its soft-skills assessment and drive international expansion across Europe. Arctic Shores lists customers including Vitality, Thales, TalkTalk, Arcadis, PwC and Siemens and has secured major contracts in Germany with Airbus, Siemens and Schneider Electric. The company was founded in 2014 by Robert Newry and Safe Hammad and is based in Manchester, UK. Arctic Shores develops online and app-based gamified psychometric tests that combine neuroscience, AI and gamification to improve recruitment. Its assessments use behavioural tasks and micro-shifts in responses, collecting around 7,000 data points to infer traits such as risk appetite and problem-solving ability rather than relying on traditional question-based tests. The company says this data-driven approach can increase diversity by as much as 60%, improve hire quality by up to 40% and raise positive candidate feedback to over 80%. Since its 2014 founding, Arctic Shores has worked with over 140 organisations across 40 countries and assessed more than 500,000 candidates. Offices in Manchester, London and Singapore support global clients including PwC, Airbus, Siemens and Deutsche Telekom. The business is rapidly expanding internationally, with international sales making up 48% of revenue this financial year. Arctic Shores plans to use new funding to accelerate international office expansion and to launch a SaaS platform to broaden its product offering for enterprise clients and SMEs.

Led · Series D · Jan 2019

Andela operates a fully remote engineering talent marketplace that evaluates technical and soft skills and matches engineers with employer teams. Founded in Lagos, Nigeria in 2014 as an Africa-focused talent accelerator, it has expanded globally and now has engineers in more than 80 countries and a client roster of over 200, including GitHub, Cloudflare and ViacomCBS. The company employs over 300 people, reports a 96% placement success rate, and says engineers placed through its platform see an average 64% income increase. Andela reported a $50 million annual revenue run rate in 2019 and has said revenue is now "so meaningfully higher than that." The company is investing in new verticals (including design, data and Salesforce), expanding its digital product suite, moving into AI, and plans to use capital for hiring across product, engineering and growth as well as M&A. Andela has faced operational and legal challenges, including layoffs after a 2019 pivot and a lawsuit from freelancer marketplace Toptal alleging theft of trade secrets. Andela sources and vets software developer talent from across Africa, running a six-month training bootcamp before placing developers with customers as remote, full-time employees. Since founding in 2014, the company has operated coding campuses in Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. It has attracted more than 130,000 applicants for roughly 1,100 developer slots. After onboarding and training, developers are embedded with Andela customers to work remotely as full-time staff. The company recently netted $100 million, reflecting a significant capital infusion reported in coverage of its model. The organization’s core product is this end-to-end talent sourcing, training and placement service for tech employers. Andela recruits and trains software developers in Africa and places them with global tech firms. The company operates campuses in Lagos, Nairobi, and Kampala that provide technical and professional skills development, leadership training, mentorship, laptops, subsidized housing, and meals. It invests roughly $15,000 per developer during an initial six-month training period, during which trainees receive a minimal salary; after promotion to client work, salaries rise to competitive local levels (around $2,500/month in Lagos and $3,000/month in Nairobi). To date Andela has hired 500 developers from an applicant pool of more than 70,000. The firm serves clients including Mastercard Labs, Viacom, GitHub, and Gusto. Andela emphasizes partnerships (Google, Pluralsight) and an open-sourced curriculum as part of its mission-driven, for-profit model. The company plans aggressive expansion using new funding, including launching two additional offices in other African countries. Andela identifies high‑potential developers on the African continent, conducts courses to grow their skills, and pairs them with companies as full‑time distributed team members. Led by CEO and co‑founder Jeremy Johnson, its developers already build products for Google, Facebook and IBM as well as dozens of venture‑backed startups. The company is based in New York City, Lagos, Nairobi and San Francisco. On June 16, 2016 Andela raised $24M in a Series B round led by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative with participation from GV (formerly Google Ventures). The company said it will use the funds to continue to expand operations. Andela is backed by earlier investors including Spark Capital, Omidyar Network, Susa Ventures, Steve Case, Founder Collective, Rothenberg Ventures and Learn Capital. Andela runs an intensive multi-year training program that combines technical and business courses and places fellows as full-time developers with U.S. tech teams after six months. Fellows are paid wages that place them in the top 5% of Nigerian income earners. The program has received over 15,000 applications and maintains an acceptance rate of roughly 0.5%, with an average class size of about ten new students per month. Andela has placed dozens of developers with companies ranging from Microsoft to Udacity, and 80% of clients have asked about bringing on more developers within the first six months. The company launched in Lagos less than a year before the article and is beginning expansion into Kenya. Its stated mission is to train 100,000 world-class developers across the African continent within ten years.